Breaking dogmas with ultracold erbium atoms

  • Date: Apr 29, 2014
  • Time: 12:30 PM - 12:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Prof. Francesca Ferlaino, Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Experimentalphysik and Zentrum für Quantenphysik
  • Room: Herbert Walther Lecture Hall
  • Host: MPQ
"Non-alkali-metal atoms have recently proved to be fascinating systems to explore novel lands in ultracold quantum physics. Here, we present recent results with ultracold dipolar gases of erbium atoms. As a consequence of the strong dipole-dipole interaction and of the large anisotropy in the dispersion potential, Er shows a spectacularly high number of Fano-Feshbach resonances both in the fermionic and bosonic isotopes. The complex Er scattering behavior escapes to traditional scattering models and requires novel approaches based on statistical analysis. Following the powerful toolset provided by Random-Matrix theory, we elucidate the chaotic nature of the scattering. Finally, we report on the first degenerate Fermi gas of Er, which is realized by direct cooling of identical fermions based on dipole-dipole interaction."
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